Carbon Dating News in 2008
LOS ALAMOS FINDINGS RELEASED AUG 15, 2008
Using some of the most advanced analytical equipment available, a team of nine scientists at the famed Los Alamos National Laboratory confirmed that the material used for radiocarbon dating of the shroud in 1988 was not part of the shroud’s fabric. Previously, micro-chemical tests had demonstrated that the cloth is at least twice as old as the medieval date determined by the now discredited carbon 14 tests. This gives new life to historical and forensic arguments that the shroud might indeed be the burial cloth of Jesus.
PRESS RELEASE
COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 15 — In his presentation today at The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed startling new findings proving that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon-14 (C-14) date the Shroud of Turin, which categorized the cloth as a medieval fake, could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they examined from directly adjacent to the C-14 sampling area were “definitely not linen” and, instead, matched cotton. Villarreal pointed out that “the [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.” Villarreal also revealed that, during testing, one of the threads came apart in the middle forming two separate pieces. A surface resin, that may have been holding the two pieces together, fell off and was analyzed. Surprisingly, the two ends of the thread had different chemical compositions, lending credence to the theory that the threads were spliced together during a repair.
LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. This hypothesis was presented by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino in Orvieto, Italy in 2000. Benford and Marino proposed that a 16th Century patch of cotton/linen material was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the region ultimately used for dating. The intermixed threads combined to give the dates found by the labs ranging between 1260 and 1390 AD. Benford and Marino contend that this expert repair was necessary to disguise an unauthorized relic taken from the corner of the cloth. A paper presented today at the conference by Benford and Marino, and to be published in the July/August issue of the international journal Chemistry Today, provided additional corroborating evidence for the repair theory.
This seems pretty much as smoking gun where the C-14 tests hitherto conducted are concerned. Now, the next question. I had understood the Rogers article to hypothesize that the carmel coloring was the result of the polysaccharide coating interacting with cadaverines (sp?). Is this a correct understanding of Roger’s ancillary hypothesis and has it been tested? Is there a scientist qualified in this area, perhaps on the speakers circuit, who would be willing to address an additional question I have with respect this this issue?
David Nehring
September 18, 2008 at 6:22 pm
[...] Originally Posted by RQH B) It’s impossible to have a rational discussion about religion because it isn’t based on fact. There’s nothing more infuriating than stating a fact that’s contrary to someone’s religion and to have them come back at you with a statement based on blind faith. I don’t know which religion you’re referring to, but Christianity is based on fact. No one with a shred of intelligence disputes that Jesus existed. The only questions are: Is He who He said he is, did he do and say the things that are written about Him, and did he really rise from the dead? We have eye witness accounts of his life, ministry, death and resurrection recorded in the gospels, and the disciples certainly believed what they asserted because most of them were tortured and killed on account of it, and yet would not renounce Him. Now, there are some people who will die for the truth, but I don’t know of anyone who would die for a lie. And then there’s the Shroud of Turin. The scientific community has been studying this ancient piece of linen for decades and they still have no answer for how the image was formed. And please, before anyone tries to bring up carbon dating, don’t waste your time. The carbon dating tests have been totally discredited. It has been proven beyond all doubt that the sample used for the dating came from a re-woven section that contained cotton, and is NOT representative of the original cloth at all. Carbon Dating News in 2008 Shroud of Turin Blog [...]
Heaven. Will you get in? - Page 2 - Anabolex Forums
December 18, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I thought this poem of mine might be of interest to visitors to this sight.
BELIEF
The Shroud of Turin came to southern France
from the Crusades in 1353;
a piece of linen cloth fourteen feet long,
holding the image of a five-foot ten-inch man,
his front and his back, head to head
conjoined; the man is bearded,
has been scourged, crucified;
on his brow the pattern
a crown of thorns would make,
pressed down with great force.
The black and whiteness of his image are
reversed, exactly like a photo
negative. For five sleepless days,
in late October ’78, forty
American scientists bring the shroud to us—
they analyze each centimeter, tweeze threads
for microspectrographs, enhance the image
into holograms, deploy
all other ways of knowing
science has. This blood
has DNA. This linen is woven from flax
grown in the eastern Mediterranean
No artist painted this image. It
comes straight from life, spontaneous
rapture––process unknown—
which seared his body’s imprint to the cloth
with delicacy and realism.
One of his wrists has holes.
The spear-wound in his side
drained serum albumin through the flax.
To see his suffering face as Jesus’ face,
is to see the word “death”
suffer a sea change,
as black crusts of his blood
bloom into spectral rainbows
of scientific light that say
this man radiated himself
outward in a way
no dead man ever has.
But that’s a leap of faith
Science dare not make.
Epiphanies happen
beyond its ever
evolving certainties;
though in Torino
the priests of reason
track mystery-
breeding chemicals
embedded in those
patient threads––wherever
they’re inclined to lead.
There was a person
in that flaxen shroud
who died of wounds:
humanly inflicted, but godlike,
through two millennia
appearing before us.
Gloved hands remove
the long straw-colored cloth
from a steel frame inside the king’s
palazzo in Torino, hands
as gentle as those women’s hands
who felt for Jesus in its weightless folds
––vanished from their embrace—
this person become cloth,
this fact who believes we
will someday find him out.
Robert Bagg
March 29, 2009 at 4:08 pm
They redid the carbon testing and found that yhe originl rsults were sorrect. I read it in the New York Times. What is this? This isn’t correct. I was looking for the real well known results. The shroud has only been tested twice, in 1988 and 2008 and it was found to have been from the Middle Ages both times. Why is everyone trying to say that the Carbon dating is wrong? Its not.
Maria
April 23, 2009 at 6:30 pm
the tests were conducted on a section that would have been handed by many many people throughout the years, the test now conduction on a section where the fire was near carbon? good clear date
jack
June 24, 2009 at 12:35 am
Raymond Rogers from Oxford is the guy that did the 2008tests. Who are these other people? they couldn’t have had the Shroud. It was never given to anyone else. Look, the Shroud is old, but it never touched Christ. There is proof.
Maria
April 23, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Ok, this is too much. we have proof that Christ existed? We have eye witness accounts? No we don’t. No one is old enough to be able to say they saw Christ. So what we have isn’t even hearsay. We have retranslated old stories. No one even has a record from the roman saying that Christ lived, and They kept good records. Carbon dating is very good proof, and if someone has an explnation as to why they think thet piece that wa examined was not a part of the Shroud, id like to hear it. In fact, isn’t it interesting that if there was a cotton, non original part of the Shroud that was the part that got examined? If its a miraculous piece, shouldn’t fate favor the truth?
Maria
April 23, 2009 at 6:43 pm
maria, what do you want, fact or faith, to have facts leaves no room for doubt which would give you belief then? then what about your faith you believe because you have proof, sorry that is not what trusting is Jesus and God is about.
Carbon dating is not proof of anything, apply that same method to rocks, mounts or anything we know the age of because we have seen and it does not work, I am shocked people still take carbon dating as a good method.
You have the Bible, you have the 6,000 year old earth, you have the Idesign, you have proof that evolution is no longer accepted (june 16th, 2009) what else do you require?
if you need facts then what you are really saying is you want to see Christs marks of the cross and the spear wound which pearsed him?
to cap the question the shroud was handled by many many people on sections of the cloth down many many years, test the section that caught fire, theres your proof if you are so desperate to get it.
Peter
June 24, 2009 at 12:44 am
Maria, they did not retest in 2008. That’s an urban legend going around on the Internet. Check out the Ohio State Shroud of Turin Conference site. And Ray Rogers is not from Oxford but from Los Alamos and he did not do any testing in 2008 because he died in 2005.
Yes, carbon dating is good. So good that it will produce bad results every time if bad samples are used. GIGO!
No, the carbon 14 dating was never redone. It should be. But one thing is certain, the results were invalid because the sample was invalid.
episcopalian
April 23, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Maria, there are those who say the Holocaust didn’t happen! “WHAT IS TRUTH?” The proof of Jesus Being, isn’t only through The Gospels but as a living reality in one’s life.
If I see a Shooting Star, I haven’t time to report it for others to see! Such is the experience of knowing God’s Reality through life.
What has been said about the uncertainty surrounding the Shroud shows how much we have to learn about its historical past. And, the never ending interest in finding proof of God’s existence.
Maria, to say there is no proof Christ existed lends support to a denial of “everything” – including the wonderful experience of seeing Shooting Stars.
James Youug
April 26, 2009 at 8:51 am
Hello, for goodness sake wake up and smell the fried chicken you bloody fools here is a simple test no radiocarbon dating here simple terms for simple people take a look at the shroud and then think of what it would look like draped over a human head the proportions are all wrong it would be wider and way more distorted as it is the image is almost perfect has no one thought of this before or has this been another typically cristian case of starting with the desired result and working backwards to find proof to the exclusion of everything else hmmmm
Jimmy
April 27, 2009 at 10:57 am
Oh and to the absolute clown who posted that nobody with a shred of intelligence disputes that jesus existed i would counter with this (with many thanks to ebonmusings.com)
Not a single contemporary historian mentions Jesus. The historical record is devoid of references to him for decades after his supposed death. The very first extra-biblical documents that do mention him are two brief passages in the works of the historian Josephus, written around 90 CE, but the longer of the two is widely considered to be a forgery and the shorter is likely to be one as well. The first unambiguous extra-biblical references to a historical, human Jesus do not appear until well into the second century.
Few if any Christian apologists will mention these extraordinary facts but we can rightfully conclude that there is something wrong here. The rosy picture painted by the gospels of a preaching sage and famous miracle worker followed by crowds of thousands stands in stark contrast to the reality of the extra-biblical historical record, and that reality is that mentions of the man Jesus do not exist until almost the end of the first century.
Why is this? It is not as if there were no capable historians at the time. There was, for example, Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived from about 20 BC to 50 AD. His own beliefs were influenced by Platonic elements that were in some ways similar to Christianity, and his writings show interest in other offshoot sects such as the Essenes and the Therapeutae; he wrote about Pontius Pilate and he was, by some accounts, living in or near Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ death and, presumably, the attendant miracles. Yet none of his works contain any mention of Jesus or Christianity.
Other writers of the time show the same pattern. Justus of Tiberius, a native of Galilee who wrote a history around 80 AD covering the time Jesus supposedly lived, does not mention him. The Roman writer Seneca the Younger, who was born around 3 BC and lived into the 60s AD, wrote extensively about ethics but says nothing about Jesus or his teachings. The historian Pliny the Elder, born around 20 AD, took a special interest in writing about science and natural phenomena, but his thirty-seven-volume Natural History says nothing about an earthquake or a strange darkness around the supposed time of Jesus’ death, although he would have been alive at the time it happened. In fact, not a single contemporary record exists of the darkness, and there was a widespread failure to note the earthquake, much less the appearance of the resurrected saints.
Why would this be??????????????????????
Jimmy
April 27, 2009 at 11:19 am
Point is : Why is a new carbon dating not planned ?
Why is the Church so reluctant to allow any further scientific investigations on the Shroud ?
Anoxie
May 11, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Episcopalian,
Maria was correct that further testing was being done. She just perhaps confused issues. A gent by the name of Chris Ramsay at Oxford commenced further testing on shroud fibres last year and the testing done up ’til now confirms the C-14 dating. As it stands now, there is no direct evidence to support the pro shroud devotees assumptions.
It is also assumed that the sample was “invalid” and based on the original writings of Benford and Marino, investigation of the Rae’s samples by Rogers and his still alive coherts at Los Alamos are continuing his work, AGAIN with the Rae’s sample NOT the Riggi sample which was cut a decent (considering the sample size) way away, and through the obligatory cleansing methods done on the fabric prior to the c-14 testing, any contaminant would be and was destroyed. How BTW Rogers claims to have tested 2 fibres from the Riggi sample is beyond me as Gonella did not supply them( from the spare samples) and any used IN the testing, were destroyed. I suppose dead men cannot ammend their lies.
Also as to Roger’s testing, it is scientifically invalid, hence no reputable journal wanting a bar of it, except for the nepotistic TA.
Before you address me to the shroudstory site, I have been there done that and the majority of the face value determinings by Daniel Porter, someone I doubt would know his butt from face, has misinterpreted many of the “findings” even on the PDF’s he supplies on his site. Perhaps he assumes people will just believe his “take” and not actually read the PDF’s themselves for confirmation.
As for you James Youung, why not actually GET A LIFE rather than claiming to live one “through” your invisible friend.
buttonfresh
May 16, 2009 at 6:26 am
Beacuse C14 test is destructive for the samples. In any case a new set of investigations is forseen after 2010 shroud exposition
StefanoP
July 17, 2009 at 11:36 am
“Beacuse C14 test is destructive for the samples.”
1-It seems obvious. But obviously they didn’t plan to analyse the samples before C14 tests destroyed them. Result is nobody can say what the samples were really made of.
2-20 years later the size of the sample could be very small.
Anoxie
October 12, 2009 at 2:22 pm